


Private Party

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Implied Relationships, Murder Family, Pillow & Blanket Forts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 00:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1920375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they heard the door shut, the two of them waited in silence for a few moments, and then Abigail said, “So…what should we do while he’s gone?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Private Party

Hannibal stepped into the dining room balancing three plates, each piled high with French toast. As he set them on the table, he said, “I’m going to be out until mid-afternoon, so you’ll have the place to yourselves.” 

Abigail and Will looked at each other, a little conspiratorially, while Hannibal poured their orange juice for them. “Where are you going?” Abigail asked, just in case it was interesting enough that she might want to come along. 

Hannibal settled himself in his chair at the head of the table and said flatly, “You don’t need to know that,” which sent a chill down Abigail’s spine, until he added, in a tone that was the slightest bit more playful, “I have a lot of Christmas shopping to do, and you won’t be getting any hints.” 

Abigail immediately looked to Will, to see if his face was lighting up the way she knew hers was. He wore a subtle but genuine smile, one that went all the way to his eyes, which was good enough for her. 

“Can we put up Christmas decorations?” she pleaded. 

“I don’t have any in the house,” Hannibal said. “But perhaps when I am out today I will find some things that are…tasteful.” 

“Is Christmas about being tasteful these days?” Will said with a smirk, between syrupy bites of French toast. 

After breakfast, they cleared the dishes together, and Hannibal and Abigail washed them while Will went upstairs to fetch Hannibal’s jacket, overcoat, wallet, and keys. (Will and Abigail were still in their pajamas, which Hannibal… _tolerated_ , in the morning.) 

He said goodbye, and gave Abigail a kiss on the cheek, and Will a kiss on the mouth. “Behave yourselves,” he said, and passed into the music room to make his exit. 

When they heard the door shut, the two of them waited in silence for a few moments, and then Abigail said, “So…what should we do while he’s gone?” 

It pleased Will that Abigail liked for them to do things together, perfectly aware that at her age, she ought to be more inclined, whatever the circumstances, to go upstairs, put on headphones, and become absorbed in something on her computer. 

But Hannibal’s authority in the house meant that Will’s relationship to Abigail had turned out to be less paternal and more fraternal. Though she still referred to them collectively as “my dads” to outsiders, Will was more like a brother; one much older, who held mentor – rather than rival – status. 

In response to Abigail’s question, Will shrugged and said, “What do you want to do?” 

“Can we make a blanket fort?” 

That was exactly the sort of frivolity that Will treasured sharing with Abigail. It was something he never got to enjoy in his youth, and would feel silly indulging in now, if it weren’t for Abigail’s infectious, youthful enthusiasm. “We sure can,” he said. “Where should be build it?” 

Abigail bit her bottom lip while she considered each room of the house in her mind. Not the music room – the floor was too hard. Not the bedrooms – insufficient furniture from which to anchor the blankets. Finally she said, “The den?” 

She meant the room in the back of the house, that was just for the three of them; Hannibal did not receive guests there. Will called it “the family room.” Having not had a family until recently, Hannibal instead referred to it as “the living room.” But Abigail was from the Midwest and called it “the den.” (Will shrank from this term, because to him _den_ meant _finished basement room with wood paneling and shag carpet_.) 

Will said, “Sounds good. How do we go about it?” 

“We’ll need all the pillows and blankets in the house, and then things to put them up with, like clothespins. Or rubber bands.” She knew Hannibal would be furious if they punctured his precious thousand-thread-count sheets with safety pins. 

“Okay, I’ll find some fasteners. You hit up the linen closet.” 

They split up, convening in the den when they had collected their supplies. Abigail judged the amount of pillows and blankets in the linen closet insufficient, so they went upstairs and stripped all the beds. After further careful contemplation, Abigail determined that they needed a couple of chairs from the dining room, to anchor two of the corners of the roof. She began draping sheets over the back of the sofa, and when Will returned, she rubber-banded the sheet corners to the knobs atop the dining room chairs. Working together, they managed to take over a space nearly the width of two queen-size sheets. They hung the remaining sheets as walls, using sofa cushions to fortify them. 

“Now comes the fun part,” Abigail said. “Furnishing!” 

They loaded the space underneath the roof with all the pillows and duvets in the house. The pillows from the beds went flat on the floor, and the decorative ones from the sofas went along the sides. Abigail had a few stuffed animals from her old home, and placed those inside as well. 

When they’d finally crammed every plush object in the house into the fort, they stood outside of it and peered in, admiring their handiwork. “Too bad there’s no Christmas lights,” Abigail remarked. 

“Maybe next time, if Hannibal buys decorations today like he said.” 

“Oh! There’s one more thing!” Abigail dashed out of the room, and when she returned, she had her laptop. She lifted the flap of one sheet, crouched down, and placed the laptop on the floor inside. Then she turned to grab Will’s hand and urged him to get in with her. 

Light from the windows illuminated the inside of the fort, but dimly. It was so thoroughly strewn with pillows, one could sit, lie, or roll anywhere, and be perfectly comfy. 

“I brought the laptop so we could watch a movie,” Abigail said. “What should we watch?” 

Will hadn’t known that there were any DVDs in the house. When they had movie nights, it was always something being broadcast on television. So he asked, “What movies do you have?” 

“We can just get anything off of Netflix,” Abigail suggested, hesitantly, as if the question confused her. 

Will used a computer as little as possible; he was young enough that he should have been savvy with them, but keeping up with all the new features just didn’t interest him. The last he’d heard, if you wanted something from Netflix, you had to put your name in a queue and they mailed you a copy of the movie days or weeks later. But he took Abigail’s word for it. “We should watch something fun,” he said. “Since we’re having a fun day.” 

“Disney!” Abigail’s eyes lit up. “What is the best Disney movie that came out when you were a kid?” 

Will smiled, a bit ruefully. “Ah, well, Disney wasn’t really making animated films when I was a kid. They made a lot of live-action movies, like, um, _Space Cat_. But yeah, the first Disney cartoon I remember coming out was _The Black Cauldron_ , and I was eleven at the time and even then I could tell that it was terrible.” 

Abigail looked at Will like he had just told her about his childhood in a foreign country torn apart by civil war. 

“I’ve heard that Generation X is really bitter,” she said. “Is that why? Because you’re the only ones who didn’t have Disney movies?” 

“That could be. Now that I think of it, though: when I was maybe seven or eight, they re-released _Robin Hood_ in theaters--” 

“Oh, I love _Robin Hood_! Let’s watch that one!” Abigail worked her magic on the laptop and got the movie ready to go. They rearranged themselves, lying on their bellies with all the pillows underneath them, and set the laptop on the floor in front of them. Abigail grabbed the corner of a duvet and pulled it over the both of them. 

The fort was so comfortable, the morning so prosaic, Will got a little sleepy. About two-thirds into the movie, he decided he’d close his eyes, just for a few minutes, and just listen, but of course he ended up nodding off. Abigail woke him up just as the film was over, asking, “Do guys find Maid Marian attractive, in this movie? Because I think that Robin Hood is really hot, and I don’t know if that’s weird, like if I’m supposed to feel that way?” 

Will had just one second to think of an actual answer to her question before something occurred to him, and he held back his laughter and put on a straight face just long enough to say, “Do you think he’s… _foxy_?” Abigail rolled her eyes, but immediately thereafter tipped over and surrendered herself to peals of laughter. She knew it wasn’t even that funny, but the way Will said it made it just the most hilarious thing she’d ever heard. And when she wiped the tears from her eyes and looked back at Will, she found him laughing just as hard at his own joke. 

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I want a snack.” 

“I could eat.” 

Hannibal forbid junk food in the house, but there was some popcorn, for movie nights. They popped it and brought it back to the fort in a big bowl. Will thought that they might watch another movie, but instead Abigail started chatting. 

Whenever she and Will got to talking for long enough, on a long drive perhaps, eventually Abigail would start asking Will questions about Hannibal, about things that only Will knew about him. Sometimes the questions got too personal, things to do with their relationship, and he shushed her. “That’s not a question you ask about your dad,” he would admonish her. She would huff, and they both knew what she was thinking, but she would never, ever say it out loud. 

More often, though, she would simply be seeking Will’s agreement that Hannibal was cool but he was _super weird_. Today, for example, between mouthfuls of popcorn, she said to Will, “Yesterday I told him I was going to walk to the library, and he told me to take an umbrella because it was raining axes. I was like, that’s a little gruesome, even for you. But then he saw the look on my face, and he said, ‘I mean to say that it’s raining cats and dogs.’” Mockingly, she suggested: “Maybe it ‘rains axes’ in the Old Country or something.” 

Will said, “That’s nothing.” He started to giggle, and then told Abigail a story: “The first day he and I met, we were in Jack’s office, and Hannibal was saying something about how hard it was for me to do my job, you know, having other people in my head. But – you’re not going to believe this – he referred to it as ‘the bone arena of my skull.’ I was like, what? A _bone arena?_ Where does that even come from?” He took a handful of popcorn, and mused, “You’ve got to be fair to him, though. English is probably his twelfth language.” 

“Yeah. He says he’s going to start teaching me Italian soon. I took German in high school. My mom says I have relatives in Germany, but I’ve never met them.” 

“Maybe Hannibal will take us there and you can meet them.” 

“What language did you study in high school?” 

“French.” 

“Ooh.” 

“Yeah, I thought I’d have a head start, because I lived in Louisiana for a while, so I knew some Creole. But it actually worked against me because the teacher taught _Parisian_ French, and I just annoyed the hell out of her. My pronunciation was wrong, my vocabulary was wrong, everything was wrong.” 

“Do you remember any of it? Can you say something in French?” 

Every woman Will had ever met had asked him this, were he to mention that he had studied the language. It had been a while since that had happened. 

“Um, let’s see. _Le chien est bleu. Oú est la bibliothéque?_ That means, uh, the dog is blue, where is the library? That’s all I got.” 

“Of course there’d be something about dogs.” Abigail and Will were both giggling when, without warning, the corner of the sheet was yanked up, revealing Hannibal’s shoes, then his trouser legs, then his face, as he leaned down to look at them. 

They both tried to stop laughing, but broke down again when Abigail meekly waved at him with the fingers of one of the hands that she’d covered her mouth with, and said, “Hi?” 

Hannibal’s expression was unreadable, and he dropped the sheet without a word. He let them hear his footsteps now, as he walked out of the room. Will and Abigail stared at each other in bewilderment. 

“Are we in trouble for making a blanket fort?” she whispered. 

“I’m sure we’re not in trouble. He probably just thinks we’re goofballs.” 

“Should we put everything away?” 

“That might be a good idea.” 

Abigail closed her laptop, and handed it to Will, who was nearer the flap and could set it and the popcorn bowl on an end table outside. They started gathering up the pillows, but then the flap lifted again, and there was Hannibal, on his knees this time, and wearing his pajama bottoms and a cardigan. Will and Abigail froze, staring at him until he said, “May I come in?” 

“Um, yeah!” Abigail grinned a mile wide. She scattered the pillows again, and patted the empty space between her and Will. Hannibal crawled on his hands and knees. “I didn’t know if this was a private party,” he said. He turned so he could recline on his back on the pillows, and stretched his arms out to either side. Will and Abigail snuggled up to him, letting him gather them into his arms. 

“Did you have fun shopping?” she asked him. 

“I always do.” 

“Did you go to Towson Town Center?” 

“ _No hints_ ,” Hannibal scolded, though he punctuated it with a kiss to her forehead…and then one to Will’s. Abigail wrapped her arm around Hannibal’s chest. It criss-crossed Will’s, which was doing the same. 


End file.
